Wednesday, 9 October 2019

Dense 'Revived Stones' Review






Artist: Dense



Title: Revived Stones



Label: Cosmicleaf



Released: 9th October 2019










I’m not overly familiar with the solo productions of Berlin based Dense. In fact my knowledge stems back some time to his collaboration with GMO and the album ‘Tales from the Yellow Kangaroo’ and more recently ‘The Blue Hole’.


The album begins with a slightly soulful vocal intro on ‘Entering Triton’ and harps back slightly to said Yellow Kangaroo with a somewhat Aboriginal feel. This is followed by a more laid back chilled trance vibe on ‘Signals from Thalassa’ and the sparse vocals work better for me in this piece. Whilst ‘Siren’ introduces an acoustic guitar riff that adds an atmosphere of a sunny beach to subtle seductive vocals and I’m beginning to warm to this release.


Housey piano notes lead you in ‘Don’t Make Me Yours’ which has a little more drive than the previous pieces and kind of puts me in mind of Depeche Mode with a female vocal a very pleasant track indeed. There’s a touch of an acidic underbelly to the plodding beat and harmonious tones of ‘Landing Save in Naiad’ the first instrumental of the album. This is followed by ‘Halimede’ another which utilises a more intricate pattern with plenty of twist and turns from angelic vocal harmonies to darker gritter synth stabs.


This mood continues in a similar vein with ‘Psamathe’ with the vocal harmonies replaced by spoken word with a touch of reverb. Finally to close ‘The Missed Chance’ fuses eerie synth sounds with a trip-hop like beat, dubbed out spoken words and operatic harmonies.


Reviewed by Woodzee.

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